SALISBURY, MD. — Perdue Farms announced its adoption of the “NestBorn” on-farm hatching concept into its broiler production and supply chain. This innovative approach to hatching day-old chicks in broiler farms instead of in hatcheries fits into the company’s commitments to animal care and No Antibiotics Ever.
In the summer of 2023, Perdue became the first establishment in the United States to house a NestBorn Egg Placing Machine. The machine was installed as a demonstration near Perdue’s headquarters on the Delmarva peninsula to more efficiently transfer larger volumes of pre-incubated hatching eggs into broiler barns.
The NestBorn machine picks up candled and vaccinated eggs from setter trays in an automated and gentle fashion to then place those eggs directly on the floor of a temperature-controlled broiler barn.
An advantage to hatching directly on-farm is immediate access to feed and water, which lowers the risk of hungry and thirsty chicks. Potential discomfort of the newly hatched chicks is also avoided through the elimination of hatchery handling and day-old chick transport. Perdue believes these “Higher Welfare Hatching Practices” will translate into enhanced chick quality and health benefits.
Now that the NestBorn demonstration has gone on for more than a year, Perdue has entered a partnership with the Belgian-based company NestBorn to further deploy its on-site hatching solution.
“In our mission to responsibly raise animals for food, we always are looking for continuous improvement of animal welfare,” said Bruce Stewart Brown, chief science officer for Perdue Farms. “A few years ago, we started to investigate the feasibility and potential benefit of on-farm hatching in our operations. We started taking pre-incubated eggs to broiler barns, instead of using the hatcher. We concluded that NestBorn is an additional asset for our broiler operations that will help further our efforts around the highest animal care and in our commitment to no antibiotics ever.”
In the first phase of the partnership, two state-of-the-art NestBorn Egg Placing machines will be installed in the United States, significantly increasing the number of on-farm hatched chicks in Perdue’s operations.
“Since the official launch of NestBorn in 2018, chicks have been hatched on-farm with our concept in more than 10 European countries,” said Erik Hoeven, general manager of NestBorn. “We are very pleased that we found a visionary poultry company in Perdue Farms, who helped us to fine-tune the equipment and methodology for the specific US barn conditions. We hope that favoring the barns instead of the hatchers for the final 2 or 3 days of the hatching process can offer alternative solutions for Perdue in terms of future hatchery designs and investment strategies.”